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(, ) is a city located in the Northwestern United States in the state of Washington. It is the largest city and county seat of Spokane County, as well as the metropolitan center of the Inland Northwest region. The city is located on the Spokane River in Eastern Washington, 110 miles (180 km) south of the Canadian border, approximately from the Washington-Idaho border, and east of Seattle.
Canadian David Thompson explored the Spokane area and began European settlement with the westward expansion and establishment of the North West Company’s Spokane House in 1810. This trading post was the first long-term European settlement in Washington and the center of the fur trade between the Rockies and the Cascades for 16 years. In the late 1800s, gold and silver were discovered in the Inland Northwest. The Spokane area is considered to be one of the most productive mining districts in North America. Spokane’s economy has traditionally been natural resource based, however, the city’s economy has diversified to encompass other industries, including the high-tech and biotech sectors.
The city of Spokane (then known as "Spokan Falls") was settled in 1871 and officially incorporated as a city in 1881. The city's name is drawn from the Native American tribe known as the Spokane, which means "Children of the Sun" in Salish. The name is often mispronounced "Spo-CAIN", while the correct pronunciation is "Spo-CAN". Spokane's official nickname is the "Lilac City", named after the flowers that have flourished since their introduction to the area in the early 20th century. Completion of the Northern Pacific Railway in 1881 brought major settlement to the Spokane area.
With a population of 200,975 as of 2007, Spokane is the second largest city in Washington, and the fifth largest in the Pacific Northwest, behind Seattle; Vancouver, BC, Canada; Portland, Oregon; and Boise, Idaho; and slightly larger than Tacoma. Spokane is the principal city of the Spokane Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is coterminous with Spokane County. As of 2008, the county had a population of 462,677.
Directly east of Spokane County is the Coeur d'Alene Metropolitan Statistical Area, comprised entirely of Kootenai County, Idaho; the combined population of the two counties was estimated at 600,152 in 2008.
The first humans to live in the Spokane area arrived between twelve to eight thousand years ago and were hunter-gatherer societies that lived off the plentiful game in the area. Over time the forests in the area began to thin out and the Native Americans became more dependent upon roots, berries and fish. The Spokane tribe, after which the city is named, are believed to be either direct descendants of the original hunter-gatherers that settled in the region, or descendants of tribes from the Great Plains. When asked, by early white explorers, the tribe said their ancestors came from "Up North". The Spokane Falls were the tribe's center of trade and fishing.
Early in the 19th century, the Northwest Fur Company sent two white fur trappers west of the Rocky Mountains to search for fur. The trappers became the first two white men met by the Spokane tribe, who believed them to be
, or sacred, and set the trappers up in the Colville River valley for the winter. The tribe discovered the men brought no "big magic" to the tribe as their members had continued to die from small pox, which had first struck the tribe in an epidemic in 1782 and wiped out as much as half the tribe's pre-epidemic numbers.